


no one's around to judge me

by peachyteabuck



Category: Defending Jacob (TV 2020)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Covid, Sex Work, girlfriend experience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:00:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27884152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachyteabuck/pseuds/peachyteabuck
Summary: after a series of events leave andy barber desperate for comfort, he turns to someone he never thought he would.
Relationships: Andy Barber/You
Kudos: 21





	no one's around to judge me

Andy has never felt more nervous in his entire life.

Not when he was taking the bar exam.

Not when he was opening law school admissions decisions.

Not when he took the bar.

Not when he began his clerkship.

Not when he began his first day at his first _real_ lawyer job.

Not when he became the assistant district attorney.

Not when he asked Laurie to marry him.

Not when the wedding took place.

Not when he heard she was pregnant.

Not when Andy was born.

And, certainly, not when he served her divorce papers.

Each of those days pale in comparison to how he feels now, on this cold February night, clicking on through the Linktree you have attached to your Instagram (both opening in an Incognito tab, despite him working from his personal laptop), opening reading your _Services_ page more thoroughly than any opening statement or higher court decision that he’s ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on. Now, he reads each service and description (and its price) as if his life and career depends on it.

He chuckles as he realizes that, in the saddest of ways, it all kind of does. His boss had noticed the quality of his work slipping since Laurie moved out, and the stress had made him lose an amount of weight that wasn’t considerable, but certainly not unnoticeable (not to mention the bags that had formed under his eyes).

Andy needed a way to relieve stress, maybe a hobby, according to his psychiatrist. First he tried running, but that reminded him too much of the exact woman he was trying to forget, knitting seemed too tedious, baking made him want to tear his hear out, and woodwork…well, the newfound scar on his forearm was proof enough that the “rugged” lifestyle wasn’t for him.

It was through another late-night binge of social media that he found the place he is now, falling into hashtag k-holes while bottles of increasing expensive liquors were drained straight from its mouth to his. Somehow, he had found his way onto the page of various sex workers, all offering things to clients that made shivers of shivers shoot up his spine. He went from profile to profile, scrolling back to first-term Obama-era photos before he figured he’d move onto the next one.

It was day four of this particular obsession when he found you – a woman who lived in New York and regularly found herself in various parts of the East Coast, who specialized in “accompaniment.” Every picture he saw made you more alluring, made his cock stir in the boxers he uses exclusively for sleeping in while heat swirled in his abdomen; your hair and make up always perfect, impeccably dressed with shoes to match. You had group photos, photos from vacations and dinners and galas and movie premieres. Everything – all of it – only made Andy want you more.

But here, now, with the illusion of a relationship blurring along the corners, Andy reads the _Girlfriend Experience_ section, reading every word with the intensity and focus he hasn’t recognized since he stopped drinking energy drinks by the gallon. Your hourly rates are burned into his brain, along with your hard limits and what he should include in the request email.

(He does read the other sections as well, but nothing imprints on his neurons like the one he read first.)

Andy finally closes the laptop as the digital clock in the bottom corner of the screen ticks past three in the morning, eyes burning from the blue light and his brain unable to put together sentences with more than one clause. With his phone alarm set, and the darkness overwhelming his senses, he falls asleep more content than he has in months.

He spends the next day’s lunch break going through your Amazon wish list, filling his cart until it was the amount he would’ve paid for three months’ rent back in undergrad, and had it all delivered with a note detailing that he hoped to a future customer. He doesn’t sign it with his full name, of course, but knowing you would know he existed was enough to satiate him for the rest of long workday. That night, Andy puts down the money and fills out the (very detailed) form to be added to your GFE waitlist, his hands shaking from the time he grabs his credit card to the time he falls asleep.

But those days were before the middle of March, and the world collapsing meant Andy couldn’t put his arm around your waist or sit across from you at fancy restaurants or shop for jewelry or clothes with you, watching your eyes glisten when you find something you like and holding the bags for you as you walk in and out of shops.

It’s within a few days of the entire world (and the courthouse) shutting down before he gets an email, telling him there’d be a delay in further correspondence from you and your assistant as you figured out how to adjust your services to the newly in-place restrictions.

Without much else to do, he waits patiently for any updates from you.

Andy’s halfway through some terrible dating show on Netflix when he gets an email notification saying he’s off the waitlist – along with outlines for what he should expect from the service and a reminder of your hard limits.

Needless to say, it doesn’t take very long at all to respond.

You agree to video chat with him that night. The lawyer part of Andy is quite impressed with the exchange, given the level of detail perfectly balanced with precise, clean, easily comprehendible language. For a second, he ponders if you do something on top of this, have some more “legitimate” job that covers the gap in your resume.

Or, maybe, you do this full time without shame – your entire being dedicated to a job Andy didn’t really know existed until less than a few weeks ago.

He snaps out of his minute trance to read the rest of the email, confirming the price, how to pay, and what time he should be ready to receive an email with the Zoom link for their date. Immediately, he looks around his kitchen to see take-out boxes stacked on top of each other, with dirty dishes mirroring that chaos in the sink.

 _Oh shit_ , he thinks. _I should probably clean up, shouldn’t I?_

You told Andy he could dress however he wants, so he chose a comfortable black t-shirt and grabbed a beer (or two, or three) to help calm his nerves. It doesn’t do much, though, because as soon as the fateful email pops up in his inbox his palms start to sweat. It reminds him of his first few times he was in front of a judge, but instead of an old white man in a large black robe coming through a door in a courtroom, he’s alone in his too-big home while he’s let into a Zoom meeting from a virtual waiting room.

His heart picks up as soon as your image loads – your make up and hair done just as he wanted, your ceiling-to-floor bookshelf crammed with novels he can’t identify as your background. Andy’s so preoccupied trying to calm the flutter in his chest he nearly misses you speak.

“Hi, Daddy,” you say with a smile, bright teeth a contrast to your dark purple lipstick. “How’ve you been?”


End file.
